Collected Essays: Volume Two

Ahoy Facebook #19

 

New acquisitions. 

Six CDs: The Real Louis Armstrong, Four Classic Albums by Gerry Mulligan, The Real Bob Dylan by Bob Dylan, Four Classic Albums by Dizzy Gillespie, The Harry Partch Collection: Volume One by Harry Partch and Songs for Drella by Lou Reed and John Cale.

New acquisitions. 

Three records: Money Jungle by Duke Ellington/Charles Mingus/Max Roach, Miles Smiles by Miles Davis and Tago Mago by Can.

One book: Liberalism and its Discontents by Francis Fukuyama.

The first record features three of the greatest jazz players playing together.

I don't think I remember hearing this record by Miles Davis before, so I thought that I'd buy it.

This is an album by a German  prog rock group from the 1970s. This album gets very weird and very wild, which is a pleasure for me as I love weird music.

After the collapse of communism, Francis Fukuyama pronounced 'the end of history.' He didn't claim that there would be no more historical events, he claimed that liberal democracy had won the battle of ideas. He published this book this year and he comments on recent events. Authoritarian regimes in Eastern Europe are actively hostile to liberal democracy and there is also Brexit, Trump, Venezuela, etc. He also writes about identity politics, which he considers illiberal.

New acquisition.

One record: The Grand Wazoo by Frank Zappa.

I've been wanting to own this for a while... I was looking for it online and couldn't really find it... It's probably my favourite Zappa album, I just love the melodies, arrangements and solos on this... I found it at a record shop in Chesterfield, so I just had to buy it... 

New acquisitions.

Four books: Maus by Art Spiegelman, Palestine by Joe Sacco, The Fixer: A Story from Sarajevo and My Troubles with Women.

These are all comic books. I think that it's a great medium, I first got into reading by looking at comics as a kid (superheroes, Asterix, various Chilean comics).

Maus is about Spiegelman's parents, who were both prisoners in the concentration camps. He draws the Jews as mice and Nazis as cats.

Joe Sacco went to Palestine and Bosnia during the 90s... He made comics out of these experiences.

Robert Crumb is not at all political, he draws about his own personal experiences. This one chronicles his experiences with women. His panels are very detail and cross-hatched.

New acquisitions.

One coaster: A Frank Zappa-themed coaster.

One book: The Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers: Collection One by Gilbert Shelton.

I needed a drink coaster, so I thought I'd buy a Frank Zappa-themed one... This one has the album cover 'Weasels Ripped my Flesh,' which is one of his greatest and strangest album covers.

This is a collection of comics from the hippie era... It was part of the 'underground comics' movement. They're funny and subversive. 

New acquisitions. 
Five books: Music in the Castle of Heaven: A Portrait of Johann Sebastian Bach by John Eliot Gardiner, The Music and Life of Beethoven by Lewis Lockwood, John Maynard Keynes: Fighting for Britain 1937-1946 by Robert Skidelsky, Hitler and Stalin: Parallel Lives by Alan Bullock and Havel: A Life by Michael Zantovsky.

I bought a lot of biographies.

The first two look at Bach and Beethoven, both their lives and music.

Skidelsky wrote a three volume biography of Keynes. This last volume covers the period when his ideas were becoming influential.

This biography looks at Hitler and Stalin. It is a chronological biography of both men, even though they never met.

This is a biography of Havel, a playwright and dissident in the Soviet Union. He became president of Checkoslovakia and later the Czech Republic following the rise of democracy.

New acquisitions. 

Two books: Metternich: The First European by Desmond Steward and Two Hundred Years of Muddling Through: The Surprising Story of Britain's Economy from Boom to Bust and Back Again by Duncan Weldon.

I bought a book a book about Metternich. He was chancellor of the Austro-Hungarian empire between 1814 and 1848. He signed a lot of treaties and ensured that there wasn't a major continental war in Europe.

This is an economic history of the UK  over the last 200 years.

New acquisitions. 

Six CDs: Shiftwork by The Fall, Extricate by The Fall, Tilt by Scott Walker, Celestial by Isis, Four Classic Albums by Thelonious Monk and Winter Fragments by Tristan Murail.

The copies of my latest book have arrived! 

 New acquisition: A John Stuart Mill t-shirt.

I went out the other night and saw a grand total of THREE people wearing Che Guevara t-shirts.

Why would one wear a Che Guevara t-shirt? To stand out from the crowd? To signal how rebellious you are?

But why would one wear a Che Guevara t-shirt in this case? He was a rabid communist who supported Maoist China. He wanted to nuke the USA.

Anyway, small quotes aren’t always a good indicator of someone’s thought. Even though Che Guevara was not a systematic theorist or thinker, it is still reductive to pull out random quotes. Still, they do give us some inkling into his thought. These are some of Che Guevara’s pronouncements:

‘In the future individualism ought to be the efficient utilization of the whole individual for the absolute benefit of a collectivity.’

'The desire to sacrifice an entire lifetime to the noblest of ideals serves no purpose if one works alone.'

'The guerrilla fighter, who is general of himself, need not die in every battle. He is ready to give his life, but the positive quality of this guerrilla warfare is precisely that each one of the guerrilla fighters is ready to die, not to defend an ideal, but rather to convert it into reality.'

'Terrorism should be considered a valuable tactic when it is used to put to death some noted leader of the oppressing forces well known for his cruelty, his efficiency in repression, or other quality that makes his elimination useful.'

'The fault of many of our artists and intellectuals lies in their original sin: they are not true revolutionaries. We can try to graft the elm tree so that it will bear pears, but at the same time we must plant pear trees. New generations will come that will be free of original sin.'

Now, let’s consider some quotes from John Stuart Mill. It IS definitely reductive to provide bite-sized quotes from Mill, as he WAS a systematic thinker and theorist. Anyway, here we go. All of these quotes come from his splendid book ‘On Liberty’ (chapters two and three):

‘The opinion which it is attempted to suppress by authority may possibly be true. Those who desire to suppress it, of course deny its truth; but they are not infallible. They have no authority to decide the question for all mankind, and exclude every other person from the means of judging. To refuse a hearing to an opinion, because they are sure that it is false, is to assume that their certainty is the same thing as absolute certainty. All silencing of discussion is an assumption of infallibility. Its condemnation may be allowed to rest on this common argument, not the worse for being common.’

‘Originality is the one thing which unoriginal minds cannot feel the use of.’

‘In this age, the mere example of non-conformity, the mere refusal to bend the knee to custom, is itself a service. Precisely because the tyranny of opinion is such as to make eccentricity a reproach, it is desirable, in order to break through that tyranny, that people should be eccentric. Eccentricity has always abounded when and where strength of character has abounded; and the amount of eccentricity in a society has generally been proportional to the amount of genius, mental vigor, and moral courage which it contained. That so few now dare to be eccentric, marks the chief danger of the time.’

‘Customs are made for customary circumstances, and customary characters: and his circumstances or his character may be uncustomary. Thirdly, though the customs be both good as customs, and suitable to him, yet to conform to custom, merely as custom, does not educate or develop in him any of the qualities which are the distinctive endowment of a human being. The human faculties of perception, judgment, discriminative feeling, mental activity, and even moral preference, are exercised only in making a choice. He who does anything because it is the custom, makes no choice. He gains no practice either in discerning or in desiring what is best. The mental and moral, like the muscular powers, are improved only by being used. The faculties are called into no exercise by doing a thing merely because others do it, no more than by believing a thing only because others believe it.’

‘Human nature is not a machine to be built after a model, and set to do exactly the work prescribed for it, but a tree, which requires to grow and develop itself on all sides, according to the tendency of the inward forces which make it a living thing.’

Ok, so if you want to signal how you are such an edgy non-conformist, would you rather wear a Che Guevara t-shirt or a John Stuart Mill t-shirt? The one who wants you to be a cog in this dreary miserable collective or the one wants you to grow and develop? The one who wants you to die for the communist ideal or the one who wants you to distrust dogma, distrust customs and use your critical faculties? I am not buying – and wearing – a John Stuart Mill t-shirt to signal that I am an edgy-nonconformist, I am buying and wearing a John Stuart Mill t-shirt to counter all those people who wear Che Guevara t-shirts.

New acquisitions.

Ten CDs: 1927-1933: The Early Years by Blind Willie McTell, Runnin' Wild by Sidney Bechet, 1939-1951 by Benny Goodman, Mingus Mingus Mingus Mingus Mingus by Charles Mingus, Kinks by The Kinks, Apostrophe by Frank Zappa, Orchestral Favourites by Frank Zappa, Greatest Hits by Queen, Greatist Hits by Smashing Pumpkins and Rain Dogs by Tom Waits.

I earn a pittance, prices are soaring and my rent is high, so I probably shouldn't be splashing money on discs, but... hey ho. (Even if they're second-hand... And on offer.) 

I went to a talk with Melvyn Bragg this evening. I've never read any of his books (thus far), but I've really enjoyed his broadcasts on The South Bank Show and In Our Time for a very long time.

I really enjoyed the conversation, which is all about his memoir. He said that he has had health problems recently and that this would be his last book. It's all about his childhood and adolescence in Cumbria in the late 40s up to the late 50s. He came from a 'working class,' background, he always loved reading and later read history at Oxford. He also had a mental breakdown in his teenage years and talked about his love for the countryside.

I've met two writers before (Paul Auster and Iain Sinclair) who I found to be a bit cold and aloof, but Bragg was very warm. The first thing he asked was 'Do you write?' and I told him that I did. I told him that I had suggestions for programs on In Our Time and that they should really do one on Bach. He said that there are many topics that they haven't covered, that Bach surprisingly was one of them and that he' d try to remember that. He then said 'Good luck with the writing.' Well, coming from Melvyn Bragg that means a lot.

COLLECTED ESSAYS: VOLUME TWO

 I have finished a new book entitled Collected Essays: Volume Two. Copies available for anyone remotely interested. Email simonking19965@gmail.com if you are interested. 

Collected Essays: Volume Two is King’s sixth book and, as the title makes blatantly clear, his second collection of essays. Whilst King is not an expert in anything, he certainly is enthusiastic about an array of different subjects. King takes you on a scattershot adventure that traverses millennia and an incongruous mix of subjects. Do you want to read a book which contains insights into European art films, political philosophy, pre-Socratic philosophy, modernist literature, post-war European history, avant-garde music, the history of ideas, the history of dreams, economic history, New Hollywood cinema and Latin American literature? Well, King might just have the right book for you.

1.       Liberty, Equality and Fraternity: The Ideals of the French Revolution in Krzysztof Kieslowski’s Three Colours Trilogy

2.       Perpetual Flux and Unchanging Singularity: The Ideas of Heraclitus and Parmenides in The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner and Waiting for Godot by Samuel Beckett 

3.       Social Change in the Heimat Trilogy

4.       Eccentric Musicians

5.       Nascent Liberalism in Antiquity and the Medieval Ages

6.       A Very Brief History of Dream Interpretation

7.       Economic Decline in the Cinema of the 1970s

8.       Imaginary Worlds in Latin American Fiction

Imaginary Worlds in Latin American Fiction

 This is part eight from a forthcoming book called Collected Essays: Volume Two.

**********************

I quote the texts in the original Spanish. This will be harder for non-Spanish speakers (the vast majority of my meagre audience) – apologies.

Imaginary worlds are appealing for a number of reasons. The yearning for alternate worlds goes as far back to antiquity, with the Babylonian Tales of Gilgamesh and in the Greek world with Homer. The real world is often not satisfying and we recourse to imaginary worlds to find respite. Imaginary worlds can disrupt physical laws, be a vehicle for self-realisation and fantasies and they can create a parallel world that creates a microcosm, mirrors our own and comments on the political arena. Latin America has a rich history of literature and it finally rose to international prominence in the 1960s. Latin American fiction has been notorious for its use of fantasy and surrealism and the way in which this is merged with realism. As well as this aspect, it has also been notorious for its political commitment. This essay will look at five authors – the Argentinean writer Jorge Luis Borges, the Argentinean writer Julio Cortázar, the Uruguayan writer Juan Carlos Onetti, the Mexican writer Juan Rulfo and the Chilean writer José Donoso. It will examine the ways in which these authors create imaginary world, their qualities, how they disrupt physical and temporal laws, how they are vehicles for self-realisation and how they comment on politics.

                           Latin America became a major continent in the literary world in the 1960. In the 1960s and 1970s, Latin American writers were in the international spotlight for the first time (Saizar 2000). It was a commercial event, although it did coincide with the writings of ‘great novels.’ Authors like Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Mario Vargas Llosa, Julio Cortázar and Carlos Fuentes sold millions of books and made a deep impression. These books merged fantasy and reality and they were socially conscious. Many critics threw the label ‘magical realism’ around, though it is hard to define. Initially, Jorge Luis Borges wrote many fantastical short stories, though he claimed that even realist literature is fantastic, as it is still artifice (Brestia year, p. 5). Movements which were prevalent in Europe, such as modernism, arrived later in Latin America. Aspects such as stream of consciousness emerged later because those modernist books were translated later. Additionally, fantastical and surrealist elements became almost synonymous with ‘Latin American fiction.’ The most famous example of this would be One Hundred Years of Solitude (1968) by Gabriel Garcia Marquez. These novels often comment on political situations and many of the writers were politically committed. Many supported the Cuban revolution, although many, such as Mario Vargas Llosa, later retracted their support. (He later run for the presidency of Peru on a centre-right ticket.) Magical realism is notoriously hard to define, although some of characteristics include the ‘transgression’ of physical laws and superhuman sensory experiences (Bennette 1999, p. 21). The 1960s and the 1970s were a golden period and these novels were promptly translated into other languages (Saizar, p.11). Exceptional writers worked independently from each other and in different countries (p. 31). The magical realism of Marquez was an act of ‘individual agency,’ although magical realism was interpreted as a portrait of ‘Latin American exceptionalism’ (p. 46). It was an act of individual imagination, but it has since been interpreted as representative of the region (p. 46).

                           This essay will now turn to analyses of three short stories by Jorge Luis Borges. The short story ‘Tlon, Uqbar, Orbis Tertuis’ is set in an ‘idealist’ planet – that is, a planet made up of thought rather than energy and matter. In this planet, language, religion and letters and metaphysics are all idealist (Borges 1944, p. 22). Indeed, a major divide in philosophy for many years was between idealism and empiricism, as the latter argues that sense-perception is dependent on experience. The former is epitomised by George Berkeley who took as it as far as it could go. Berkeley argued that all of reality is the product of the mind and anything that is not encountered by the mind is created by God. Other philosophers did not go this far, such as Immanuel Kant, who mixed idealism and empiricism. The latter strain is epitomised by David Hume who argued that all perception and knowledge is dependent on experience. According to Borges’ story, everything that Berkeley writes about is true in Tlon. It is a series of ‘independent heterogenous acts’ (p. 23). It is temporal, not spatial (p. 23). Perception is wholly mental and nothing happens spatially; everything happens in a temporal way: ‘Los hombres de ese planeta conciben el universe como una series de procesos mentales, que no desenvuelven en el espacio sino de modo sucesivo en el tiempo’ (p. 24). Thought often associates related ideas: ‘La percepción de una humareda en el horizonte, después del campo incendiado y después del cigarillo a medio apagar’ (p. 25). Indeed, materialism is ‘scandalous’ in Tlon (p. 27). However, one school of thought in Tlon rejects the concept of time and they argue that the present is undefined, the future has no reality and the past has no reality (p. 26). In this story, Borges constructs an imaginary world which is based on western metaphysics. The writings of George Berkeley and even sometimes Kant, Hegel and Schopenhauer sometimes seem counterintuitive, but the whole fabric of this planet is made up of thought, perception and ideas.

                           This essay will now look at the short story ‘Las ruinas circulares’ (‘The Circular Ruins’) by Jorge Luis Borges. The short story is about an old sage who goes to a circular temple, sleeps, dreams and creates another human in another temple. It later transpires that he has been dreamed up in another temple by someone else, so this is why the ruins are ‘circular.’ The village that he arrives at is described thusly: ‘Donde el idioma no está contaminado de griego y donde es infrequente la lepra’ (1944, p. 36). The language is ‘uncontaminated’ by Greek, so it is clearly otherworldly, as most European languages are derived from Greek. Borges also writes: ‘Nadie lo vio desambarcar’ (p. 56). This is reminiscent of the old philosophical adage – if no-one saw it, how could it happen? The temple is described thusly: ‘El recinto circular […] tuvo alguna vez el color del fuego y ahora el de ceniza’ (p. 56). It was once active, but it is now perishing and the sage is going to reanimate it and bring it back to life. Indeed, Borges writes: ‘Devoraron los incendios antiguos,’ (p. 56) which clearly shows that the temple was once fully active a long time ago. The sage goes to sleep: ‘Durmio […] sino por determinación de la voluntad’ (p. 56). Sleeping is usually a passive process, but in this case it is a highly active one which requires ‘will’ and ‘determination.’ There have been other temples and other gods which have been burned and killed: ‘Río abajo, las ruinas de otro templo propicio, también de dioses incendiados y muertos’ (p. 56). He wants to dream a man with ‘meticulous integrity’ (p. 56). It is clearly a supernatural project which transcends normal physical laws, as he calls it a ‘magical’ project: ‘Proyecto mágico’ (p. 57). The task of dreaming and sleeping is usually passive, but in this case it is creative. Indeed, it is even called ‘dialectic’: ‘Al principio fueron caóticos, después fueron de naturaleza dialectica’ (p. 57). Dialecticism involves a proposition, another counter-proposition and a synthesis of both arguments. Again, it emphasises that the dream is a proactive, strenuous and intellectual activity. It is a dialectical engagement with ghosts and spirits. Eventually, students start to study his work: ‘Alumnos estudian su doctrina’ (p. 60). His dreams are incoherent and difficult to decipher. He starts to dream his heart: ‘Sono con un corazón que latía’ (p. 60). He ends up creating a human body. He perceives him: ‘Lo percibía, lo vivía’ (p. 61). He creates his heart and lungs and the rest of his body (p. 61). His son is born in an identical circular temple. However, he realises that he is just a projection: ‘Descubriera de algún modo su condición de mero simulacro’ (p. 64). He realises that, conversely, he has also been dreamed by another sage in another temple: ‘No ser un hombre, ser la proyección del sueno de otro hombre. […] También era una apariencia, que otro estaba sonandolo’ (p. 64). The whole story is about dreaming and about creating another human, but it transpires that he is been dreamt by another magician. This is why the story is about ‘circular’ ruins. The process is called ‘dialectical,’ but although he is on his own dreaming, he is interacting with ghostly figments. Dreaming is an active, creative, determined and willed process in this case, although he does describe it as ‘incoherent.’ This imaginary world is oneiric, but there are also allusions to magic and sorcery. It is surrealistic and fantastic and there are no traces of the real world whatsoever, which is unlike the ‘magical realism’ of Marquez.  

                           ‘The Aleph’ is one of Borges’ most famous stories and this essay will now look at it. The protagonist’s wife has been dead for many years and he visits her brother every year so that they can discuss poetry. This character has an ‘aleph’ in the basement of his house. This device contains all points in space in the universe, seen from all angles: ‘Uno de los puntos del espacio que contienen todos los puntos’ (p. 187) […] Todos los lugares del orbe, visto desde todos los angulos’ (p. 188). Naturally, the character thinks that this is crazy. Retrospectively, he says that language cannot describe the experience: ‘Cómo transmitir a los otros el infinito Aleph, que mi temerosa memoria apenas abarca?’ (p. 188). The Aleph is a tiny sphere (p. 188) in which everything is an infinite number of things. The Aleph is constant breadth, expansion, multiplicity and infinity. The character describes all the things that he sees in a very long sentence that goes on for a couple of pages:

‘Vi la noche y el día contemporaneo (p. 193) […] Vi a los sobrevivientes de una batalla. […] Vi a todas las hormigas que hay en la tierra […] Vi convexos equatoriales y cada uno de sus granos de arena […] Vi la circulación de mi oscura carne […]’ (p. 193).

The sphere contains all points in time and space and Borges describes the experience over a long paragraph. Unlike the other two stories that this essay looked at, it starts off realistically, but it veers off into fantasy. ‘The Aleph’ is a reference to the Arabic alphabet, in which the first letter contains all of the other letters. It is an imaginary world and it is almost a microcosm within the story. In the beginning of the story, Borges has a Shakespeare quote from Hamlet: ‘Oh God, I could be bounded in a nutshell and count myself a king of infinite space.’ The whole story is about infinite space bound in a small object. The story is also short – it is not a novel – and it describes something vast and infinite. Indeed, Borges never wrote a novel and considered a lot of novels superfluous.

                           Julio Cortázar also wrote short stories and they are also classics within the genre. Cortázar wrote highly surrealistic and absurd stories which defy interpretation. This essay will now look at three of his stories and it will start with ‘Carta a una senorita en París.’ The story is about a character who vomits rabbits. He writes: ‘Me duele ingresar en un orden cerrado, construido’ (1951, p. 19). He cannot enter a closed and constructed order, but the whole story thrives on disorder and the unexpected. The story is written as a letter to the owner of the flat and she is in Paris. He is actually writing the letter because of the bunny rabbits, ‘los conejitos.’ He writes: ‘Todo es higienico, transcurre en un brevisimo instante. Saco todos los dedos de la boca, y en ellos traigo sujecto por las orejas a un conejito blanco’ (p. 19). This is a quick and hygienic process in which jerks out a white rabbit. Eventually, he decides to kill the bunnies, but he does not do it. He writes: ‘De día duermen. Hay diez. De día duermen’ (p. 22). They come out at night and wreck the entire flat: ‘El destrozo insalvable de su casa’ (p. 27). They break the curtains, the chairs, paintings on the wall, leave the carpet full of hair and they keep shrieking (p. 27). This story is highly oneiric, as the bunnies come out at night and they are possibly a metaphor for the unconscious being let loose. The story is completely surreal, bizarre, jarring, surprising, absurdist and quite humorous as well. It is similar to surrealism in other art forms, such as Luis Bunuel in film and Salvador Dalí in painting.

                           This story will now look at Cortázar’s short story ‘Continuidad de los parques.’ The story is about a businessman who reads a novel during the weekend. The short story ends with the characters in the novel becoming real and the protagonist ends up in his living room. Indeed, he wants to read the novel, but he has abandoned it because he is so busy at work: ‘Había empezado a leer la novela unos días antes, pero la abandono por negocios urgentes’ (p. 13). He wants to read the novel in his leisure time, he is very wealthy and he has a butler. In this context, reading the novel is an act of escapism from a busy schedule. He reads the book in the tranquillity of his study: ‘Volvío al libro en la tranquilidad del estudio’ (p. 13). He is immersed in the novel: ‘La ilusión novelesca lo gano en seguida’ (p. 13). The story describes a woman with a lover and she leaves him and walks towards the house. She carries a knife. Cortázar describes the house, which is quiet and empty. The dogs do not bark and the butler is not in. She goes into the room and discovers a man reading a novel. He describes the room: ‘La puerta del salón, y entonces el punal en la mano, la luz de los ventanales’ (p. 13). She finds the character reading his novel: ‘La cabeza del hombre en el sillón leyendo una novela’ (p. 13). The man reads the book and imagines the story until the woman arrives at his house where he is reading. The story is self-referential meta-fiction, as it refers to itself. The man reads a book and the story comes to life in the world that he is living in. It is an act of escapism from his busy schedule, but the work of fiction becomes real. It is set in the real world, but the story recreates the subjectivity of reading and the emotional reactions that it provokes. The act of reading is a subjective mental experience, but in this case it becomes palpably real. The implication is that he is going to get murdered, as she is carrying a dagger. 

                           This essay will now look at Cortázar’s short story ‘Axolotl.’ The protagonist looks at an aquarium full of fish in a zoo and ends up becoming a fish. He writes: ‘Quadaba horas mirándolos. […] Ahora soy un axolotl’ (p. 151). He writes that he has a connection with the fish: ‘Estábamos vinculados’ (p. 151). There is something unfathomable which links the fish with the protagonist of the story: ‘Que algo infinitamente perdido y distante seguia sin embargo uniendonos’ (p.152). They have golden eyes and they look at the man who stares into the aquarium, as he scrutinises their body and face. He writes: ‘Abolir el tiempo y el espacio con una inmovilidad indiferente’ (p. 153). They abolish time and space with their ‘indifferent mobility.’ Once more, the story is highly subjective and the character loses his sense of time and space. He writes that their eyes are similar to human eyes: ‘Diversos peses me mostraban la simple estupidez de sus hermosos ojos semejante a los nuestros’ (p. 153). They show him another way of looking at things: ‘Me decian de la presencia de una vida diferente, de otra manera de mirar’ (p. 154). The character is entranced in his heightened subjectivity, as he thinks about a different way of living whilst he glues his head to the glass. Indeed, the guard of the zoo is disconcerted by his strange behaviour (p. 154). He eventually becomes one of the fish: ‘Antes de ser axolotl’ (p. 154). There is a sense of anthropomorphism here, but it is inverted. In anthropomorphism, the animals acquire human characteristics, but in this case the human acquires animal characteristics. However, he does write that they evince human characteristics: ‘Si piensan como los hombres, sera porque los axolotl piensan como hombres’ (p. 157). Cortázar spoke about ‘fisulas’ in interviews, which are surreal and fantastical moments which transcend the mundane and which surprise us. The character looks at an aquarium and becomes transfixed by the fish and becomes one of them. Again, the story is very subjective and it is all about his interior experience.

                           Juan Carlos Onetti was one of the precursors of ‘the boom’ and his stories mingled fantasy and reality. His novel La Vida Breve (1950) (A Brief Life) is about a man who keeps a scenario in his draw at work. He ends up living inside it, in a place called ‘Santa María.’ The last chapter of the novel takes place in that imaginary world. In this world, there is nothing surreal or supernatural. Cortázar’s stories have surreal elements in them, but they often – as in ‘Axolotl’ and ‘Continuidad de los parques’ – describe subjective experiences in the real world. Onetti’s ‘Santa María’ takes place in a mythical/parallel reality, but there is nothing supernatural about it. Indeed, the writing is almost naturalistic: ‘El negocio está ahora abierto y el sol ilumina las narices, los bigotes, las telas sedosas del escaparate’ (p. 404). He refers to a character that he is infatuated with as ‘Ustéd’ and English character as ‘Inglés.’ It is an imaginary world that reinforces his own preferences, predilections and he does not have to bestow other people with names. It is mostly comprised of subjective descriptions of what happens: ‘Usted examina los vestidos. […] tan rapidamente que mis ojos confunden los colores’ (p. 405). Although Santa María is a fictional parallel world, there are still references to real cities. Santa María is posited between Buenos Aires and Montevidoe and is in some ways a composite of both. Additionally, this imaginary world is still imbued with political slogans: ‘Un largo paredon donde han pintado leyendas politicas con altas letras blancas’ (p. 423). Additionally, this chapter is subjective, it is from the first person and it has a lot of interior monologues which ruminate about other characters. Everything seems to be an amorphous blur and it is not clearly defined: ‘Confudimos calles, risas, músicas, faroles’ (p. 424). He does not reply to the greetings of strangers called Albano since, like the streets, most of the people inhabiting Santa María are not concretely defined and most people are called Albano. He describes a scene thusly: ‘En una plazoleta de barrio, sin estatuatas ni verja, con un enorme pino central’ (p. 427). The park does not have statues and just one giant tree. Once more, the imaginary world is not as concretely defined as the real world. He walks with a woman aimlessly: ‘Alcanzamos la esquina y remontamos la desierta calle arbolada, sin huir de nadie, sin buscar ningún encuentro, arrastrando un poco los pies, más por felicidad que por cansancio’ (p, 428). He finds meaning with a woman and he creates an imaginary world about finding serenity and happiness. This imaginary world is not as surrealistic as Cortázar, but although it is set in a parallel world it has more realistic elements. Although it has more realistic elements, few characters are given names and the surroundings are sketchy.

                           Like Onetti, Juan Rulfo was a precursor to the Boom and he was also a big influence on these writers. In the novel Pedro Páramo (1955), the character Juan Preciado goes to a town called Comala. His mother, on her death bed, tells him to go there because his father Pedro Páramo lives there. As soon as he gets there, he finds that Comala is a ghost town and that all of its inhabitants are dead. The novel jumps about in time and chronicles Comala and the autocratic reign of Pedro Páramo. When he gets there, he is told that no-one lives there: ‘Aquí no vive nadie’ (p. 13). He is told that Pedro Páramo has been dead for years: ‘Pedro Páramo murio hace varios anos’ (p. 13). It is an imaginary world and, additionally, the novel is not linear and jumps about in time. The novel takes place in a ghost town in which all the characters are dead. As such, a universal clock is lost. It creates an imaginary world in which the political world is mirrored. Pedro Páramo represents a Latin American ‘caudillo,’ an autocratic tyrant who imposes his will on the population. Rulfo also recreates the rural poverty that had been endemic in Latin America. He describes events in different moments in time. Water is a recurring motif: ‘En el hidrante las gotas caen una tras otra’ (p. 29). In one scene, a character wakes up and Rulfo describes how he wakes up: ‘Adormecido, plastado por el peso del sueno’ (p. 29). This has an oneiric quality to it. Rulfo does not describe the physical characteristics of his characters; they are all vague and ghost-like: ‘Vio cara de una mujer oscura recotrada contra el marco de la puerta, oscurecida todavía por la noche, sollozando’ (p. 30). She says: ‘Tú padre ha muerto’ (p. 30). He says: ‘Y a ti quien te mató, madre’ (p. 30). It is a dream-like environment, as the character wakes up from dreaming. The son has to remind her that she, too, is dead. Everyone is dead and death is omnipresent. There is a sense that families are perishing and there is a lot of talk about parents, mothers and dying. There is a sense of history, families and lineages coming to an end, but it is all in a perpetual stand-still as they are all perpetual ghosts. In another scene, revolutionaries want to kill Pedro Páramo and aim to take possession of his land. Tartamudo, a humble peasant with a stutter talks to the autocratic strongman. Pedro Páramo asserts himself: ‘Y qué esperas? Por qué not te mueves? Anda y diles a esos que estoy para que se les ofrezca. Que vengan a tratar conmigo’ (p. 101). He is clearly an authoritarian leader who will deal with anyone and he is willing to deal with subversive revolutionaries. He is also willing to use harsh methods in dealing with them. He asserts his authority over Comala, a fictional town that clearly resembles many Latin American places. At one point in the novel, Pedro Páramo says: ‘We are the law’ (p. 105). There is no law constraining him and there are no checks and balances. Rulfo creates a world in which there is no universal clock because all the characters are dead. Themes of death, decay, ghostliness, familes and lineages are present. Rulfo also recreates the political environment, with its rampant poverty and its authoritarian leaders asserting themselves.

                           This essay will now look at El obsceno pájaro de la noche (1970) (The Obscene Bird of Night) by José Donoso, possibly one of the strangest novels ever written anywhere, let alone this time and period. The novel is about a schizophrenic character called ‘Mudito’ (‘Mutey’) who is assistant at a care home, a law student, assistant to an aristocrat, an aspiring writer and he oversees a castle of monsters. The novel flits through all of these perspectives. Together with the maid Peta Ponce, they conceive the mutant child ‘Boy’ in an act of witchcraft. His father, the aristocrat Azcoíta, is repelled by him and transfers him to a castle of mutants so that he grows up in a normal world. Additionally, Mudito likes to get into sacks and a co-worker at a care home, Inés, who is always pregnant, carries him around like a baby. The whole novel is bizarre, oneiric and surreal. There is one striking scene when the monsters operate on Mudito so as to turn him into a monster. All of the monsters drag him away: ‘Sus deformidades como si no tuvieran verguenza de ellas’ (p. 271). In this parallel world, the monsters are normal and Mudito is the exception, so they are not ashamed of their deformities. They never leave the castle, but Mudito can: ‘No sale nunca de la Rinconada […] no pueden salir, como yo tengo permiso para salir’ (p. 271). Mudito flits in and out of this castle of monsters. The paragraphs are very long and, as they are stream of consciousness, they capture Mudito’s warped thinking and he is clearly psychotic. In this warped world, being a normal human is in itself strange. These monsters find him disgusting: ‘Demasiado asqueroso […] asquerados de mi persona’ (p. 272). They want to complete a blood transfusion on him and put monstruous blood into Mudito. Mudito says: ‘Me estan monstroficando’ (p. 272). This translates as ‘they monstrofying me’ and Donoso employs a neologism here. The blood comes from different monsters and they have different qualities: ‘Como si tuvieran sabores distintos que reconozco’ (p. 273). He loses his form: ‘He perdido mi forma’ (p. 273). They completely change who he is: ‘Me deforma hasta que ya no soy yo’ (p. 273). He is no longer Humberto Penaloza and loses his identity: ‘Me están quitando la identitad’ (p. 275). Indeed, a major theme in the novel is how the self is annulled and how individuals have to assume different social roles in different situations. Mudito has so many different social roles that he is schizophrenic. In this particular instance, monsters take away his identity by turning him into one of them. Mudito writes that he has never really had a stable identity: ‘Además ya no soy quien fui si es que algúna vez fui alguien’ (p. 275). They have completely annulled his identity, but Mudito assumes so many social roles in so many different situations that he wonders whether he ever really had one in the first place. This is clearly a psychotic hallucination and the castle of monsters is clearly a figment of his imagination. This imaginary world is created in the novel by the aristocrat Azcoíta because he wants his mutant son to grow up in a world in which he is not a freak. This imaginary world is completely surrealistic, bizarre and comedic, but it is also an interior monologue and a stream of consciousness. It is also the record of a psychotic and disorganised mind.   

                           Borges disrupts physical laws in ‘The Aleph,’ but his stories are also set in parallel realities with their own physical laws. ‘Tlon’ is a mythological planet based on metaphysical idealist philosophy. ‘Tlon’ and ‘Ruins’ are parallel worlds, but they are self-enclosed and do not comment on the political world. Cortázar disrupts physical laws, such as in the story about vomiting rabbits, but they describe subjective experiences. They are often a vehicle for self-realisation, as in ‘Axolotl’ in which the character becomes a fish. Cortázar is often oblique and the three stories that this essay looked at do not have political commentary. Onetti breaks physical laws, as Santa María is the product is the product of the protagonist’s mind, though the territory does not break physical laws. It is definitely a vehicle for self-realisation, as the character keeps a screenplay in his draw and ends up living it. He populates it with women that he finds attractive. It is a parallel world, but it has echoes of Buenos Aires and Montevideo. In Juan Rulfo, the novel disrupts temporal laws, as all the characters are dead and the novel jumps about in time. The novel is a parallel world and it comments on the political realm. The eponymous character embodies the autocratic ‘caudillo’ and there are depictions of revolutionaries. The novel by José Donoso disrupts physical laws, as a girl is always pregnant, there is a castle of mutants and Mudito is turned into a mutant. In many ways, there are aspects of self-realisation as these are all Mudito’s hallucinations. He has to be a lawyer, even though he wants to be a writer. He has to serve the aristocrat Azcoíta and he gets shot trying to save him. In many ways, these fantasies are a form of psychotic self-realisation since he is deeply repressed. The novel does have political commentary, since the maid Peta Ponce is part of an underclass and controls the upper crust. Azcoíta is a wealthy aristocrat and he is dependent on many people such as Mudito to serve him, so this comments on Chile’s class-divided society. The protagonist always assumes different personalities depending on the social context and he is schizophrenic as a result. These are all the ways that these Latin American writers create imaginary worlds.    

Works Cited

Bennett, Caroline Jane. (1999) The Politics and the Poetics of Latin American Magical Realism. PhD thesis for University of London.

                           Borges, Jorge Luis. (1949) El aleph. Madrid: Alianza editorial.

                           Borges, Jorge Luis. (1944) Ficciones. Madrid: Alianza editorial.

   Brescia, Pablo. (2008) A. J. ‘A Superior Magic: Literary Politics and the Rise of the Fantastic in Latin American Fiction.’ In Scholar   Commons. 4.

               Cortázar, Julio. (1956). Final del juego. Madrid: Alfaguara.

                           Cortázar, Julio. (1951) Bestiario. Madrid: Punto de lectura.

                           Donoso, José. (1970) El obsceno pájaro de la noche. Santiago: Alfaguara.

                           Onetti, Juan Carlos. (1950) La vida breve. Barcelona: Edhasa.

                           Rulfo, Juan. (1955) Pedro Páramo. Barcelona: Editorial Planeta.

   Sáizar, Consuelo. (2021) ‘Constructing Hegemony: The Latin American Boom and the Book Industries of Spain and Mexico: 1963-1967.’ PhD thesis for the University of Cambridge.